


Steve Wakes

by Deannie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 01:06:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2209836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d love to say he gave as good as he got, but he’s always been honest to a fault. So says Bucky. He should listen to him sometime. Let it be, see the world for what it is and just let it go. Be a lot less painful. <i>Takes place before and during First Avenger.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Steve Wakes

Steve wakes and even his bones hurt.

He’d love to say he gave as good as he got, but he’s always been honest to a fault. So says Bucky. He should listen to him sometime. Let it be, see the world for what it is and just let it go. Be a lot less painful.

He hears a knock at the front door and mom’s soft, friendly greeting and knows he should get moving. Sunlight streams through the windows and he needs to get to work.

Yeah, Bucky says those words, but he knows better. Steve’s been standing up to bullies his whole life. These were no different. They were bigger than him—they’re _always_ bigger than him—and they were bigger than the girls they were harassing, too. He couldn’t let it go. He never will.

He remembers clearly a conversation he and his dad had not long before Dad died. Steve was five and had stood up to some of the older boys who were pushing Skeeter Marcus around. Polio had left Skeeter even frailer than skinny little Steve himself, and Steve just couldn't stand by and watch.

One of the other kids' moms had brought him home, expecting his parents to take him to task for fighting. His dad, wasted from the gas that had burned out his lungs before Steve was even a glimmer in his eye, had sat him down and Steve remembers wondering what he was going to do to him.

> _"Why'd you fight 'em?" Dad had asked. Breath was always at a premium for Steve's dad, but Steve likes to think he'd've been a man of few words anyway._
> 
> _"Huey stole Skeeter's crutches," he said, eyes on the floor. "I was trying to get 'em back." He'd looked up, expecting to see anger in his dad's eyes, and saw only approval. "I'm not in trouble?" he'd asked, confused. Even Skeeter's mom had been mad to find them fighting._
> 
> _“Of course not! You did what you had to, son. No crime in that." He'd laughed until he hacked—which never took long. "God didn’t give you much to work with, Stevey, but you never got an excuse not to do what you have to. There will always be a bigger man trying to take the little guy down—the Krauts taught us that. You stand up for what’s right.”_

Though right now, it’s hard to stand up at all.

“Looking good, Rogers.”

Bucky’s bright, mocking grin is met by Steve’s wry one. It even hurts to do that. They’ve played this out a million times and they’ll play it out a million more. After all, Bucky was the one who pulled Huey off him all those years ago. He's been doing it ever since.

“You should see the other guys,” he deadpans.

The other guys are probably hanging out at the diner laughing over him.

“What was it this time?” Bucky asks. “Someone try to take your lunch money?”

It’s an old joke. He never had any lunch money.

Bucky’s pal enough to help him get some clothes together and brother enough not to step out as he dresses.

“A few guys were bothering some of the downtown girls—”

“I love it that you can’t say hooker,” Bucky says, laughing. “And only you would get beat up defending them.”

“I don’t have to approve of someone to approve of her right to be safe,” Steve says quietly. His fingers are swollen and buttoning his shirt is hard. Bucky smacks his hand away, earning a yelp, and buttons it for him. Neither of them is embarrassed—too many years behind them for that.

“You’re one of a kind, Steve,” Bucky says, smiling. “Now let’s see what your mom has cooking for breakfast.”

 

* * * * * * *

 

Steve wakes and his mom is dead.

He should feel alone in the world, but he doesn’t. He can’t. He rolls over where he’s fallen asleep on the couch and finds Bucky snoring on the floor, a random collection of pillows for a bed. Just like he promised.

“With me to the end of the line, huh?” Steve whispers, grinning as Bucky lets out a particularly loud snore. He throws a pillow from behind his own back and it drops lightly on Bucky’s face. His best friend doesn’t wake, just rolls over and bats it away.

At least the snoring stops.

Steve lies back, hands behind his head, and stares at the cracked ceiling of his mother’s house. His heart still hurts, but at least he knows he’ll be sharing the pain. Hell, he’ll be sharing his whole damn life with Bucky. Somehow he knows that. They’re inseparable, even when separated.

Somehow, that makes a difference.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Steve wakes and he still aches in places he never knew he could ache. Everything is just worn down. It feels great.

He curled himself around a grenade yesterday, and today he’s alone in the barracks, ready to be the first.

He’s never been the first at anything—unless it was the first to get knocked down.

He wonders what Bucky would think. He almost wrote him last night, but what would he say? “Dear Bucky. By the time you get this, I’ll be a super soldier.”

Or dead.

Somehow, the dead doesn’t scare him much, but he knows it’d scare Bucky. Always has. He’s never understood Bucky’s devotion to him, but he guesses maybe he’s never had to. After all, he’s never even questioned his own devotion to Bucky. They’re just brothers, after all. Blood relation not required.

He keeps the letters Bucky’s sent from the Theater in his foot locker. Maybe soon he won’t have to worry about letters at all. Maybe they’ll use the 107th to test their super soldier out. He can’t wait to see Bucky’s face when he gets there.

If he survives today.

He should write and tell him about Peggy, though. Just the thought of Bucky’s grin at the idea of his best friend finally finding a woman who’s interested in him is enough to push Steve off the cot and down to his foot locker for his uniform.

Okay, maybe interested is a little optimistic. But at least she talks to him.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Steve wakes and Bucky’s alive. It’s more than Steve had when he jumped out of that plane. He’s still amazed he did that at all. He hopes Peggy and Howard made it out safe.

He hopes he and these soldiers will, too.

The ground is hard beneath him and he lies there a moment, turning his head to watch Bucky sleep and listening to Dugan and Morita make a perimeter sweep. They’re soldiers through and through and Steve wishes he felt a match for them. Them, Bucky, hell every one of the men he’s trying to get back to base… He’s just a chorus girl after all. They’re the heroes.

And Bucky’s alive.

 “Quit staring, ya punk.”

Steve grins at the griping as Bucky stretches. It’s 3:00 am. They need to be on the road in an hour. He wonders what Phillips will say when they get back. Because they _are_ getting back. He didn’t come all this way to fail.

“Just good to see you, is all,” he says, stretching himself. The burns and bruises of a few days ago are probably nearly gone and he still can’t get used to the feeling of that. He barely remembers twenty years of wheezing from the moment he woke up in the morning, but he tries. _Stay who you are_ , Dr. Erskine said, and Steve aims to do just that. Got lost for a while, but now, here, tired and yeah, even a little scared, he feels like he’s found himself again.

Or maybe for the first time.

His best friend groans. “Yeah, well, I promised you I wouldn’t win the war ‘til you got here.” Bucky's still sore and exhausted. He needs a medic. Most of the men need medical attention, really, but it'll take at least four days to make it back to base. If they don't get caught first.

Steve chuckles. “This isn’t exactly what I meant.” He stands, feeling fit and whole and it’s weird to feel like that. It’s less the serum today, though, and more the man he pulls up to stand at his side.

“Damn, it’s weird to look at you.” Bucky’s never been anything but truthful with Steve. Steve usually appreciates it more.

“What, you don’t like the new look?” He’s rubbing it in and he knows it. He’s taller now—by almost two inches. And stronger. Faster.

“I don’t know, Steve, it's just—”

"Hey, Cap!" Morita calls out quietly. "Want us to get everybody moving?"

Bucky smirks and Steve knows he has a sort of stupid look on his face. He didn't mean to be in charge, but somehow everyone seems to think he is.

"Yeah," he says finally. "Um, I guess we'll move out as soon as we get the tank going." Morita just nods and he and Dugan do what he tells them, like he is who he says he is.

Bucky's looking at him, a small smile on his face.

"What are you looking at, jerk?"

"Steve Rogers, captain in the US Army," Bucky says, a trace of pride in his voice that has Steve blushing. "Who'd've thought I'd live to see that."

"You almost didn't." Steve didn't mean to let it slip out, but it did, and he tamps down on the memory of fear when he saw Bucky muttering and strapped to that table.

Bucky slaps him on the back. "Yeah, well, thanks to you we're all gonna live to tell about it, right?" He grins. “Hell, look at you! You’re a soldier now. You even look the part—like your body finally caught up to the guy inside.”

Bucky’d think that, of course. Might even be true now. Steve’s mind flies back to that night with a bottle of schnapps in an empty barracks and hopes Erskine would be proud of him.

“Maybe,” he says quietly. “Guess I should enjoy this while I can.” He grins at Bucky’s look. The look that says, “You’re _enjoying this?!_ ”

“Phillips is going to send me stateside for court martial as soon as we set foot back on base.”

Bucky hooks an arm around his neck, freezing a second. Steve wonders if Buck finds the new height difference as weird as he does. “I’ll bet you a bottle of scotch he gives you a commendation.”

“I’ll take that bet.” He deserves to be courtmartialed, rescue or no rescue, and he knows it.

Dernier and Jones come up to them, waiting on orders Steve doesn’t know how to give and shouldn’t be asked to. Hell, Dernier’s not even an American and he’s looking to Steve to lead him.

So Steve does what he has to. “Get everyone moving as soon as possible. You two are with me and Bucky. Morita, Dugan, and Falsworth will lead the men. We find food and shelter. Go to ground for the day and move out again at dusk.”

Bucky smirks at him, but Dernier and Jones just salute and head off to do as they're told. Maybe Steve is what Erskine thought he was, after all.

It’s a pity he’ll never get a chance like this again.

Bucky knows exactly what he’s thinking, of course. “It better be some damn good scotch,” he says quietly. “Come on, ‘Captain America.’” The name is laced with the kind of mocking that only a brother can get away with. “I gotta get you back if I’m gonna win that bet.”

Three weeks later, Steve plops a bottle of Chivas down in front of Bucky, who finally looks rested. It cost a mint, but he doesn’t have anything else to spend his money on—nothing as important as this, anyway. And as always, Bucky’s more than willing to share. This time, Steve even has a third round, surprised to stay clear-headed. Must be because he's bigger than he used to be.

“To a new world, pal,” Bucky hails him. “Let’s make sure we’re around to see it!”

 

* * * * * * *

 

Steve wakes and Bucky’s dead and there’s a hole in his heart that is never going to fill.

Everyone is sorry—like with his mom, like with his dad when he was a kid—they’re all sorry. But they don’t know. They don’t understand. The boys, they all miss him, too, but they don’t understand the difference between a world with Bucky in it and a world without.

Steve isn’t sure he ever will, either. The end of the line passed him by and Steve's a train that just keeps going, off the rails. Feels like a betrayal, sometimes.

Inseparable. Brothers. Now he’s orphaned. Alone. Adrift…

Hydra took from him the person he was fighting for. He’ll fight for everyone else of course, do what he has to, but the one person he had left, the one that was _his_ reason, is gone.

Reason enough to take every last one of them down.

He stares at the plaster above him, remembering a day years ago and miles away when he woke to a different cracked ceiling to find Bucky there beside him. He refuses to roll over and look at the floor with no bed of pillows.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Steve wakes to ice and is surprised to do it.

He expected Schmidt’s plane to break apart on impact. He expected to be dead.

Instead he’s cold and in pain. The kind of pain he hasn’t felt since he stood terrified and dizzy in a metal box while his body shifted and changed around him. No, even that hadn’t hurt this badly. God it hurts.

Erskine said he could regenerate, and so far it’s been true, but he’s not sure his body can withstand this and he’s not sure he wants it to.

But it might.

It’s something he’s considered—in Verstadt, when he fell 200 feet and all-but walked away, in Rhinedas, when he took three bullets and woke a day later with the bullet holes already healing...

In the Alps, when he watched his best friend fall into the dark and wished, more than briefly, that it was him and not Bucky.

He doesn’t know if he has the courage to live forever. He doesn’t think that’s how God wants it and maybe that’s why he’s here, freezing to death in the middle of the arctic.

No. No, he’ll be found—maybe Howard will find him with one of his new ultra-sensitive radar arrays, maybe it’ll be Phillips and his pig-headedness—he’ll be found and he’ll only be a little late to that date...

He tries to curl tighter and screams roughly at the pain.

When did Steve Rogers start lying to himself?

> _“There’s no harm in a little white lie, pal.”_
> 
> _Bucky had been trying, again, to convince him to… embellish… with the girls. But it wouldn’t matter, even if he was willing to. You get a dame with a lie, you just have to keep on lying._
> 
> _“You lie to your girls, Bucky?” he’d asked with a smile, expecting something outrageous._
> 
> _Bucky hadn’t disappointed him. “Don’t have to lie, Steve,” he’d said, throwing out his arms and showing himself off to the air. “I’m perfect all by myself.”_

Steve wonders if Bucky was this cold when he died. Did he just hit the bottom of the canyon and stop—stop breathing, stop living, stop being _here_? 

Or did he survive? For a while? God... Did it hurt this much?

Steve closes his eyes and blocks out the white. Like the snow in the Alps…

He knows no one's coming.

He hopes Bucky didn't live to know it, too.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Steve wakes and the Dodgers are playing—tied 4-4. He hurts, but it’s the ache of sleeping too long, not pain. Not like he remembers.

Pain and despair and... He doesn't remember much else.

He’s in a room, clean and impersonal. Like the ward his mom worked in. Why...?

The radio catches his attention.

“Pearson beaned Reiser in Philadelphia last month...”

Reiser. Three men on and Pete Reiser up to bat...

Phillies at Dodgers. He remembers the game.

Bucky had gotten tickets and a couple of girls—Bucky always seemed to be able to find a couple of girls—and they’d watched the game from the third base line. Bases loaded... The girl even hugged him when Reiser tapped home...

The door opens and Steve watches a woman walk in nervously. He doesn't remember how he got here, but he knows it's a trap—he doesn’t know whose—and he runs.

And outside, the world is terrifyingly different and he wonders if he is dead after all. He _should_ be dead.

He should be _dead_. With that realization, memories of the last day of his life slam into him. Schmidt and the cube and the plane and Peggy and the crash and the pain and the cold…

He's surrounded. The cars are different: sleek, dark. No one has a gun on him, but all of them are armed.

“At ease, soldier!”

The voice holds power, though the man speaking looks more like Hitler in his jackboots than any commanding officer that Steve would normally follow. But he stops at the order. He can’t _not_ stop.

This is not his world…

“Look, I’m sorry about that little show back there,” the man says, real compassion in his tone that gives Steve pause. “But we thought it best to break it to you slowly.”

“Break what?” he has to ask. He’s afraid of the answer.

It must be true, he guesses. He can’t die—that crash should have done it if anything was going to.

But if he’s alive, then where the hell is he? It looks like Times Square, but…

“You’ve been asleep, Cap. For almost 70 years.”

Asleep… His eyes roam, taking in more than he can process. _Seventy years?_ Peggy, Phillips, Morita, Jones, Dernier… They’d all be dead now. Gone. Like Bucky. Seventy _years_?! God…

The world is loud and full and bright—so bright! Neon moves now!? Even the buildings are shining...

“You gonna be okay?” the man asks. Sounds like he really cares about the answer.

 _“You gonna be okay?”_ They’d all asked him that, after his dad, after Mom, after the serum, after Bucky, every time his world turned over.

He wasn’t okay those times and he isn’t now… But he’s lived his life this far following Dad's one simple rule: Do what you have to.

If he can’t die, he’s better off doing what he knows, right?

“Yeah,” he answers. Not because it’s true, but because it has to be. "Yeah, I— I just..."

He wonders if Bucky would be proud he’s finally learned the value of a little white lie.

"I had a date."

The End


End file.
